YouTube made MassageNerd an industry celebrity, plus it pays off

When Ryan Hoyme began teaching massage therapy, he spouted so much information that a student once told him, "Oh, you're such a massage nerd."

The name stuck. Now Hoyme, 38, and business partner Ken Chang, 37, upload videos to a YouTube site called MassageNerd. Over the past five years, the videos - which run the gamut from demonstrations of massage techniques to tips on running a business - have collected more than 4 million views.

The site has become a business in itself: It grosses between $5,000 and $8,000 a month from advertising, which is shared with YouTube, and the men clear $2,000 to $3,000 a month, Chang estimated.

It's paying off so well that Chang, who lives in Cottage Grove and shoots the segments, is considering quitting his day job as a graphics instructor and doing MassageNerd full-time.

"I think it's within everyone's means to do this," Chang said.

Hoyme, who lives with his wife and two kids in Rochester, said he has no plans to quit teaching, but the videos have changed his life. He's a become a minor celebrity of sorts in massage therapist circles.

"Literally, I get mobbed at all the conferences because people know me," he said.

But YouTube is trying to make it sound like a breeze, promoting its YouTube Partners program for budding entrepreneurs by showcasing examples like MassageNerd.

The partners program is a simple proposition.

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Partners like MassageNerd.com provide a steady stream of videos and YouTube finds advertisers for them, and they divide the take.

YouTube won't divulge the percentage of the ad revenue the partners get, only that it is the majority.

YouTube, a division of Google, is fuzzy on other metrics, too. Austin Lau, YouTube's manager of the partners' program, will say only that the program pays out "millions of dollars a year" to its partners and "hundreds of people are making six-figure incomes and thousands more are making more than $1,000 a month."

But what's undisputed is that YouTube is an online video monster. It collects 3 billion views a day worldwide and people upload 48 hours of video to YouTube every minute.

"The things we're looking for are partners who have a platform," Lau said. "We want original, high-quality and innovative video to which they own the rights."

Jon Seltzer, a marketing instructor at the University of St. Thomas' Opus College of Business, said the key to the YouTube Partners program is that it makes it easier than ever for anyone to show off their skills.

"I think it's incredibly exciting, and if you do something very, very well, you can monetize it and share it," he said.

Most of the videos in the YouTube Partners programs are musical performances, but it's a good environment for well-made instructional videos, too, he said.

"I think it's bounded only by the creativity of the individual," Seltzer said.

YouTube has more than 20,000 partners worldwide, and it's always on the lookout for more talent like MassageNerd.

"Their passion shines through," Lau said.

Compared with sensations like, say, the made-in-Minnesota "JK Wedding Dance Entrance," which has collected more than 69 million views, MassageNerd's 150,000 views a day are a drop in the vast ocean of online video.

But the secret is fresh material. Most massage therapy sites load only a couple of videos and stop or they start charging to see more, Hoyme and Chang said. MassageNerd is up to 3,200 clips, and it kept the site free.

"When we looked at the early competitors, everyone was trying to charge," Chang said. "We looked at it as, it's right to make money, but it's kind of wrong to charge too much.

"We found the more you share, the more successful you become," he said.

The two met a decade ago when their alphabetically arranged classes on marketing and massage were next door to one another at the Minnesota School of Business in Oakdale.

Hoyme started the videos because he got tired of endlessly repeating his demonstrations, and he wanted his students to study outside of class.

Still, he was hesitant.

"I was scared to death," the therapist said. "I kept repeating things over and over because I was so scared of being on camera."

Chang had no prior experience making videos. He started shooting MassageNerd as a classroom exercise using a borrowed mini-camcorder and an old PC. The early results were rough, he admits.

"When you start, you shouldn't be thinking about revenue," Chang said. "You should be thinking it's just about the funnest thing in the world to do. If you do it for money at first, you'll get frustrated because there won't be any."

Hoyme and Chang say they want to make the site a steady business, not a shooting star that flames out.

"Remember 'VH1 - Where Are They Now?' " Hoyme said. "We don't want to be those guys."